Boundary Poetics

This essay approaches Adania Shibli’s 2016 novella Minor Detail through what I term boundary poetics, a way of reading state-sanctioned boundary formations like excessive checkpoints, erection of concrete walls, and new maps erasing original settlements from its key, as a useful methodological approach for reckoning with how the history of violence and occupation are manipulated and controlled by the state. How then does Shibli’s novella reckon with movement in contemporary Palestine dictated by one’s willingness or ability to cross borders, checkpoints, military training zones, and museums and archives?